could see the cops fidgeting around me. I shook my head. “Sure,” I told them. “The murderer broke in while the victim was writing.” I pointed to different sheets as I spoke, so they could follow me. “This was a man of great focus and calm,” I told them. I sighed inwardly. The more we know of crime victims, the greater the sadness. The stronger the outrage. “The brush strokes don’t show any sign of interruption. Until the final moment.” I pointed some features out on the last page. “You can see that the balance of the calligraphy was done in one smooth motion. Even the final sheet. But there’s this slight squiggle at the tail end. If he were shot while doing it, I’m assuming it would make his hand jerk.”
“Micky rolled his eyes.” Uh, yeah, ya could say that.”
“And it would show up on the paper,” I finished, pointing at the echo of the bullet’s impact laid down in ink for us.
“What’s it say?” Strakowski asked. I hesitated. “You can read it, right?” He looked alarmed.
I shrugged. “Sure. But it’s not that simple.” Art looked pleased. Micky wagged his eyebrows at Ramirez.
Strakowski held out his hand for the paper. “How so?”
“We done in here?” I asked. “I could use some air.” It was getting a little thick in the hut. It may have been my imagination, but I thought that the smell of blood was getting stronger.
We ambled out toward the front of the house. Behind us, the technicians gleefully scurried back into the hut. Strakowski eventually turned and leaned his rump against a police cruiser, his arms crossed over his chest. He looked at me, then at the younger cop.
“Look, Burke,” Ramirez began, and licked his lips. “We know what we’re looking for, but we really don’t know what we’re looking for. Know what I mean? And the fact that it’s in Japanese doesn’t help.”
“I understand, Ramirez, but look, some of this stuff is pretty obscure. There have to be people more qualified than me to do this.”
I wasn’t trying to be humble. When I started my studies years ago, I thought of myself as an academic with an interest in the martial arts. Then I met Yamashita. Now I’ve come to the awareness that I’m a martial artist with some advanced academic credentials.
“We know there are people more qualified, Burke,” the Lieutenant groused. “We even spoke to one.”
The younger cop eyed me. “You know a guy at Columbia named Cook? James Cook.”
I got a mental image of Cook: tall, with long thin hair brushed back from a wide forehead. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and a bowtie. We had crossed paths in grad school. Mentally, he never really left. I went for different lessons in Yamashita’s dojo.
“The Fujitsu Professor of Asian Studies,” I answered. “Quite the expert.”
Strakowski raised his eyebrows. “So he told us. Very impressed with himself.”
“He sniffs a lot,” Ramirez added.
I thought Cook was an insufferable snob, but I feel that way about a good many academics. So I kept quiet.
“Professor Cook, and here I’m quoting,” the Lieutenant said, “had neither the time nor the inclination to assist us in our… what did he call it Ramirez?”
“Colorful.”
“… colorful little problem.”
Ramirez looked at me significantly. “The guy’s an asshole,” he murmured.
“So it was our thought, since you appear to know something about things Asian, that we bring you on as a consultant,” Strakowski concluded.
I nodded in understanding.
“You read Japanese,” Ramirez said, tallying off the points on his fingers. “You’re familiar with the history and culture. You’ve worked with a police investigation before…”
“And I’m not an asshole,” I added helpfully.
Strakowski gave me a look and pushed himself off the car with a grunt “That,” he said, “remains to be seen.”
“What’s the calligraphy say?” Ramirez persisted.
I looked at them. “There’s a Japanese tradition about leaving a poem or a piece of calligraphy behind when you’re dying. It’s supposed to be a life statement. So these things are pretty elliptical.” I could tell from the looks I was getting that my explanation was not helping any.
“OK,” I tried again, “you have to understand that what this man wrote may be a clue. But it may not. If he knew he was going to be killed…”
“Hard not to notice,” Art said.
I nodded at that. “If he really knew what was about to happen, he might have had time to compose himself. But then again, who knows what goes through your mind at a time like that?” I gestured at the paper in Strakowski’s hand. “This could just be a random thought.”
“But you can read it, right?” Strakowski repeated.
“Of course he can read it,” Micky said. “He’s just bein’ a know-it-all.”
I shrugged. In some lines of work, you get to carry large caliber automatics. In my line, you get to be pedantic.
I held the paper up and the four cops looked at me. They were different people but, for a moment, they all had the same look: like dogs catching a distant scent and hoping it would be something to chase. “It says,” and I paused for effect, “Shumpu.”
“Is it a name?” the Lieutenant asked.
I shook my head no. “It means ‘spring wind.’”
Strakowski puffed his cheeks out and let out a long breath. He glanced, up at the gray sky, where thin rain clouds were getting blown in from the ocean, just out of sight.
Ramirez was incredulous. “His last words are a weather report?”
“This mean anything you can think of, Burke?” Strakowski asked me.
“Nothing specific right now. Let me think about it,” I said.
You could tell he was disappointed, but I wasn’t going to rush this. Strakowski’s head swiveled toward Micky.
“Anything you want to add?”
Micky shrugged in my direction. “He’s the expert.”
“Some expert. So far, I gotta say,” the Lieutenant looked off into the street and then back at us, one by one, “I am not impressed by you guys.”
Art narrowed his eyes and said, slowly and ominously, in his best Master Yoda voice, “You will be.”
Different things are important
